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Nos. 14-1167(L), 14-1169, 14-1173
_________________________________________
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
__________________________________________
TIMOTHY B. BOSTIC, et al., PLAINTIFFS-APPELLEES; and
CHRISTY BERGHOFF, et al., on behalf of themselves and all others similarly
situated, INTERVENORS,
v.
GEORGE E. SCHAEFER, III, in his official capacity as the Clerk of Court for
Norfolk Circuit Court, DEFENDANT-APPELLANT; and
JANET M. RAINEY, in her official capacity as State Registrar of Vital Records;
ROBERT F. MCDONNELL, in his official capacity as Governor of Virginia;
KENNETH T. CUCCINELLI, II, in his official capacity as Attorney General of
Virginia; DEFENDANTS-APPELLANTS: and
MICHÈLE MCQUIGG, INTERVENOR/DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.
____________________________________________
ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA AT NORFOLK
___________________________________________
BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE ROBERT OSCAR LOPEZ SUPPORTING
DEFENDANT-APPELLANT SCHAEFER, AND FOR REVERSAL
___________________________________________
David Boyle
P.O. Box 15143
Long Beach, CA 90815
(734) 904-6132
[email protected]
Counsel for Amicus Curiae Robert Oscar Lopez
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES……………………………………………………....iv
STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE…….………………..........1
ARGUMENT………………………………. ………….…………………….…….1
I. My Experience Growing Up...............................................................................2
II. The Impossibility of Finding a “Clean” Sampling of Kids Raised by SameSex Couples…………………………………………………………………...8
III. Annotated Bibliography…………………………………………………….13
A. ADULTS…………………………………………...……………………13
B. KIDS…………………………………………………………………….19
C. CHILD ABUSE BY GAY PARENTS WHO WERE NOT INITIALLY
INVESTIGATED THOROUGHLY, SINCE AUTHORITIES FEARED
APPEARING “BIGOTED AGAINST GAYS”………………………...21
IV. The Rhetorical Climate for Critics of Same-Sex Parenting………………...24
CONCLUSION……………………………….…………………………………..27
CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE AND WORD COUNT…………………….28
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE……………………………………………………29
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TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
CASES
Bostic v. McQuigg, No 14-1173 (No. 2:13-cv-395, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19110
(E.D. Va. Feb. 13, 2014))……………………….….………………………….1
Bostic v. Rainey, No. 14-1169 (No. 2:13-cv-395, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19110
(E.D. Va. Feb. 13, 2014))……………………….………….………………….1
Bostic v. Schaefer, No. 14-1167 (No. 2:13-cv-395, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19110
(E.D. Va. 13, 2014))…………….…….………….…………………………...1
RULES
Fed. R. App. P. 29……………………………………………………………...1 n.1
OTHER AUTHORITIES
Askme, You’re only against gay marriage because of your religion. Part 3 Gender
Identity, asktheBigot, Aug. 20, 2012, http://askthebigot.com/2012/08/20/genderidentity/ (last visited April 4, 2014, as with all other Internet links herein)......14-15
Askme, You’re only against gay marriage because of your religion. Part 4Biology Matters, asktheBigot, Aug. 20, 2012, http://askthebigot.com/2012/08/20/
biology-matters/…………………………………………………………………...15
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Jeremy Deck, My Father’s Closet, Boundless Webzine (courtesy of Internet
Archive Wayback Machine), undated but apparently from c. 2000, http://web.
archive.org/web/20120109091049/http://www.boundless.org/2000/features/a00004
17.html…………………………………………………………………………17-18
Donor Conceived, Child of lesbian parents, AnonymousUs.org, July 17, 2013,
http://anonymousus.org/stories/story.php?sid=1554#.UpmL7FCUQ4y............20-21
Maggie Gallagher, Adult Children Speak Out About Same Sex Parents, 2004, New
Jersey Family Policy Council, http://www.njfpc.org/adult-children-speak-outabout-same-sex-parents......................................................................................16-17
Robert Oscar Lopez, Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View,
Public Discourse, The Witherspoon Inst., Aug. 6th, 2012, http://www.
thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/08/6065/………………………………………16, 24
R.O. López, Le Figaro runs confessional of man raised by lesbians, who opposes
gay marriage now, English Manif, Jan. 11, 2013, 8:58 a.m., http://englishmanif.
blogspot.com/2013/01/le-figaro-runs-confessional-of-man.html……………..13-14
R.O. López, La Joie de Vivre 1:3 -- The Manifesto of Manuel Half, son of a gay
father and surrogate mother, Nov. 16, 2013, 9:56 p.m., http://englishmanif.
blogspot.com/2013/11/la-joie-de-vivre-13-manifesto-of-manuel.html…………...20
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R.O. López, La Joie de Vivre 2:10 -- Kids of Gay Couples Speak Out, Part 2 of 4-RIVKA EDELMAN, BOBBY LOPEZ, DAWN STEFANOWICZ, Mar. 24, 2014, 7:49
p.m., http://englishmanif.blogspot.com/2014/03/la-joie-de-vivre-210-kids-ofgay.html..............................................................................................................15-16
Loren Marks, Same-sex parenting and children’s outcomes: A closer examination
of the American Psychological Association’s brief on gay and lesbian parenting,
41 Soc. Sci. Res. 4, July 2012……………………………………………………12
Steve Robson, Andy Cannon, 23, was sexually abused by his gay adoptive parents,
Daily Mail (United Kingdom), Mar. 28, 2013, updated 6:39 p.m., http://www.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300779/My-adoptive-dad-abused-years-socialworkers-ignored-complaints-hes-gay.html#ixzz2Rcaydhzw………………….23-24
Paul Sims, Gay couple left free to abuse boys - because social workers feared
being branded homophobic, Daily Mail (United Kingdom), Sept. 5, 2007, updated
9:53 p.m., http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-480151/Gay-couple-left-freeabuse-boys--social-workers-feared-branded-homophobic.
html#ixzz2RccQApyQ………………………………………………………21-23
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“Debbie Smith”, A Daughter’s Reflections About A Gay Father (undated),
DawnStefanowicz.org, http://www.dawnstefanowicz.org/pdfs/DebbieSmith’s
AUTOBIOGRAPHY.pdf……………………………………………………19-20
Denise Shick, Denise’s Story, 2011, courtesy of Internet Archive Wayback
Machine, http://web.archive.org/web/20120404123248/http://www.help4families.
com/crisis.htm……………………………………………………..………………19
Test. by Dawn Stefanowicz, Conn. Gen. Assemb. Judiciary Comm. Pub. Hr’g,
Mar. 26, 2007, available at http://www.dawnstefanowicz.org/docs/R000326DawnTMY.pdf........................................................................................................14
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STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE
I, Robert Oscar Lopez,1 am writing this Brief in Support of DefendantAppellant, George Schaefer, to ask that Virginia respect the original definition of
marriage as between one man and one woman. My interest in these cases, Bostic v.
Schaefer, No. 14-1167 (No. 2:13-cv-395, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19110 (E.D. Va.
Feb. 13, 2014)), and by extension, Nos. 14-1169 and 14-1173, stems from my
experience as a child raised by a lesbian with the help of her female partner for
seventeen years, and from my experience as an outspoken commentator who
challenged the social-science consensus that supposedly proved there were “no
disadvantages” to being raised by gay or lesbian parents.
ARGUMENT
My personal life story is not the main source for my position before the
Court. My position against same-sex marriage stems more from my experience as
an activist and archivist compiling the testimonials of people raised by same-sex
couples (I affix here a collection of such), and my observations of how academic
researchers have collaborated with gay activist organizations like the Gay and
Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Human Rights Campaign to commit
1
I wrote the vast majority of this brief without help from any other party or its
counsel, though my own counsel gave editing, formatting, or other help at the end;
and no party or its counsel gave money to its writing or submission, see Fed. R.
App. P. 29. All parties have filed blanket permission with the Court for amicae/i to
write briefs.
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character assassinations against any such children who come forward with negative
feedback.
In the present climate of suppressed expression it is unwise to place children
under the power of same-sex couples since there are many parties in society
devoted to erasing or hiding things that go wrong in their homes. Moreover, such
harsh conditions mean that research into this area has to be thrown out—we cannot
respect a social-science consensus based on an academic system that openly
punishes people for expressing truths that undermine the same. The failure of the
academic establishment to foster free speech and honesty in this area is twofold:
Not only have they allowed many people raised by same-sex couples to be
persecuted by the organizations that claim to fight for them; also, they have
destroyed the academic system on which we would have relied for guidance in
determining whether children have a right to a mother and father.
I. My Experience Growing Up
I will explain my life history here to clarify where I developed a personal
interest in same-sex parenting.
My mother was a Puerto Rican psychiatrist and my father was a Filipino
psychiatrist. Their marriage was falling apart by 1970, when I was conceived, and
it seems to me, from my research into the past, that my mother’s lesbianism was a
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major factor in their breakup. It is difficult to unearth the past with certainty, but it
seems certain that my mother conceived me with the intent of raising me without
my father.
By my earliest memories, my father did not live in our home and had minimal
contact with me. We did not practice regular shared custody. By the time I was two
years old, my mother was in a stable, supportive, healthy lifelong relationship with
another woman, whom I saw five to six times a week and viewed as a third
parental figure. Because my father was absent and my mother was not as
emotionally interested in me as her partner was, I developed a stronger emotional
attachment to her lesbian lover than I did to my own mother.
My mother and her partner were tactful and sensitive about assuring that their
relationship did not cause me undue stress. They maintained separate houses in
town until I was a teenager and only moved in together when I was finishing high
school. They did share camping space in a recreational vehicle park about forty
minutes away from our town, however, and we spent all our weekends together as
a family. While my older siblings did not bond emotionally with my mother’s
partner, I did, and to me, for all intents and purposes, this was the family I grew up
with. By about 1975, my father had a common-law wife, with three children from a
former marriage, with whom I did not have any desire to connect; his relationship
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with her lasted well into the 1980s and prevented me from establishing any serious
bond with my father.
During my childhood and adolescence I presented the outward signs of a
successful upbringing and could have easily been the poster child for same-sex
parenting. I was president of the French and Spanish clubs, editor of the high
school newspaper for two straight years, and graduated one year early from high
school, ranking ninth out of hundreds of graduating seniors. I was accepted by
Yale University and arrived there in 1988 as an emancipated seventeen-year-old.
Today I am a tenured university professor, a published author, and going on
fourteen years in my life’s only marriage -- to the same woman who gave birth to
my only child, a daughter who is seven years old.
Behind these façades of a happy “outcome” lay many problems.
Even in the conditions of my home, which represent in many ways the best
possible conditions for a child raised by a same-sex couple, I experienced a great
deal of sexual confusion. I had an inexplicable compulsion to have sex with older
males, which manifested in 1984, when I had my first sexual encounter with two
older teenage boys in my bedroom. One of the boys ended up having to go to the
hospital for alcohol poisoning after my mother discovered us naked and entangled.
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I was exposed to gay culture from an early age because my mother and her
lover had a number of lesbian friends. My mother was a devotee of Catholic
liberation theology and placed me in contact with priests and nuns who had radical
ideas about sexuality and gender, sometimes referring to God as “She” and
speaking in frank terms about the beauty of homosexual relationships.
In her work as a psychiatrist my mother also wanted to help poor lesbians and
often blurred the boundaries between personal and professional work, sometimes
offering our home as a safe refuge for mentally ill lesbians. On some occasions she
invited over families that were struggling with the homosexuality of a teenage son.
She seemed to like for me to speak to these self-questioning boys, believing
perhaps that both my and his sexual dilemmas might be resolved simultaneously.
Whether she worried that we might end up having sex is unknown to me, though
these boys were always at least four years older than I (typically college students
while I was in high school).
By 1985 and 1986, I had moved past teenagers and wanted to have sex with
older men who were my father’s age, though at the time I could scarcely
understand what I was doing. There was a bookstore in our neighborhood that had
a pornography section where I went regularly to find older men. I believe it was
around 1987 that I first had a man offer me payment in exchange for having sex in
the back of his van; he was a contractor of some kind doing painting and
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landscaping. My first time being paid for sex brought me a mix of shame and
further compulsion. I became a habitual sex worker by the age of sixteen in various
cruising spots where older men told me I could find other customers; these
included public parks, the bathrooms in 24-hour supermarkets, community sports
centers, and bookstores. My sleep pattern was highly irregular by the age of
fifteen, so I often wandered outside the home while my mother was asleep and
went to these “cruising” spots. By my teenage years I was also almost entirely
unsupervised; my mother never saw my school report cards and days could go by
without any adult even seeing me and asking me what I was doing. Months could
go by without any contact with my father or siblings. I did have somewhat regular
contact with my mother’s lover.
The money I received for sex certainly helped me financially because it allowed
me certain spending money beyond what I earned with my teenage jobs at a
pizzeria and in my mother’s clinic. But the money was not as impactful as the fact
that I needed to feel loved and wanted by an older male figure, even if for only as
short as a half hour.
When I went to college it took me a while to find out where the gay meeting
spots were, but once I did, I again became addicted to sex with older men, and
again began accepting money for sex.
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I did not have psychological problems or drug problems, but the sexually
compulsive problems of my adolescence became compounded after my mother
died and her inheritance was stuck in New York State’s surrogate courts. She had
appointed her female lover the executor of the estate and then signed a codicil
about ten years later, appointing my father as executive of the estate. In the ensuing
conflicts, my mother’s lover had to move out of the house she had shared with my
mother. I also ended up homeless.
I began relying once again on prostitution to make rent money. I found a gay
Latin American immigrant’s advertisement in the Village Voice and went to stay
with him for a year, but during that time my lowly pay as a clerk at Building
Services 32B-J was not enough to meet my needs and appeared insufficient for me
to accumulate enough savings to return to Yale. Yale did not qualify me for student
loans.
I did finally get a promotion within Building Services 32B-J and was able to
return to Yale for my final year. I completed my degree in Political Science with a
B average and found consistent full-time work between 1993 and 1998.
During the 1990s I assembled around myself a group of a dozen or so gay men,
and we called each other “the family,” behaving in real ways like the proxies for
the relatives we had lost contact with. The emotional support of this alternative
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“family” was significant, but it was also entangled with sex because we were
having sex with each other in addition to acting as surrogate fathers and sons and
brothers.
In 1998, I found out I had cancer and had to be rushed into surgery at
Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. The tumor was severe, according to the doctor,
and had to be removed right away. At that instant, without knowing why, I called
my father rather than my mother’s lover. After twenty-seven years of estrangement
and absence, we rebuilt our relationship. He took care of me after the surgery and
liberated me, in a sense, from the gay “family” that had been positive but also
toxic. Being able to say, “you are my father” to him meant the world to me. I
moved in with him while I underwent extended treatment at Roswell Park Cancer
Institute in Buffalo, and we were able to re-create my childhood between 1998 and
2000; in 2000 I moved in with my girlfriend who would later become my wife.
(She still is today.)
II. The Impossibility of Finding a “Clean” Sampling of Kids Raised by SameSex Couples
The question is not whether a child needs a mother and father. Every child has a
mother and father, even if one of these was someone who abandoned the child,
died, was a mere sperm donor, or gestated the child for pay.
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For the child of a same-sex couple, this individual is not a number or a
hypothetical – this is a real person with a face, a name, a history, an origin story,
and a cultural meaning. In my case, the missing father was an entirely different
race. I found myself, in college, longing so badly to know about the Philippines
that I helped to found the Filipino Intercollegiate Network for Dialogue, even
though I could not reveal to the other Filipino students the complex and
discomforting reality of my motives for wanting to be acknowledged as Filipino
despite having been raised with no cultural ties as such.
For other children of same-sex couples, the longing and yearning for the lost
parent of the opposite sex takes other forms, because their situation is different.
Some of them are adoptees who, like so many other adoptees, feel an
inexplicable need to find their original parents, often with a mix of anger and
longing. For adoptees placed in same-sex couple homes, the long-recognized
challenges felt by adoptees are compounded by the gender imbalance of the
adoptive home. It is not necessary, given the long waiting lists of heterosexual
couples who wish to adopt, ever to place a child in the adoptive home of two samesex individuals. The moment the adoption becomes legal, then the chance of
having a mother or father is permanently foreclosed, and the adoptee can never
reverse this act of deprivation, which is then added to the initial trauma that caused
the loss of his birth family.
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In a case where one member of the same-sex couple is the child’s biological
parent and the couple wants to “jointly” adopt the child, the adoption is a form of
coercion. Now the child, in addition to having permanently lost the link to a
biological parent of the opposite sex, must submit to the authority and control of a
new parent who may or may not dispense of such power with generosity.
I have heard the scenario raised in an Irish debate – “what if a same-sex couple
is raising a child but only one is the legal parent, and the other one needs to pick
the child up from school?” This is typical of the scenarios flagged in same-sex
parenting debates. In truth in most schools in the United States a parent can leave a
note explaining that someone else is going to pick the child up from school. A
legal joint adoption, however, would give the non-biological parent the right to
come to school without prior notice and demand that the child leave with him,
whether or not the child wants to. Far from offering “legal protection” to the child,
this opens the door to child abduction and custody battles that can escalate and
inflict terrible stress on the child. There is no reason to change adoption and
marriage laws in order to accommodate a small number of easily avoidable
instances, which we probably do not want to encourage anyway.
One of the main differences between heterosexual adoptive homes and
homosexual adoptive homes is also the extent to which they allow adoptees to
grieve. All the heterosexual adoptive parents I know show exceeding patience and
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generosity to their adopted children when the latter become angry and rebellious.
“You are not my mother!” is a harsh thing for an adoptee to say to an adoptive
mother, but heterosexuals who have adopted seem to have developed an
understanding that there is, in many adoptees, a grieving and sense of loss that has
to be respected, even if it comes out as anger.
Gay couples that adopt seem to suppress any sense of discontent on the part of
the child by aligning any such rebelliousness as signs of the same prejudice that
supposedly assaults the gay parents from outside. The widespread practice in the
gay activist community of using same-sex couples’ children as propaganda worries
me because it indicates that gay parents cannot accept a split between their
interests and the children’s interests.
After compiling the testimonials and stories of over thirty people raised by
same-sex couples, I reject entirely the social-science consensus. My main rejection
of the social-science consensus comes from the reality that:
(1) their metrics cannot reflect the deeper, unquantifiable pains experienced by
children in such homes even if they look happy on paper;
(2) many children of same-sex couples are under pressure to make their parents
look good and internalize this pressure, so they cannot be trusted to provide frank
answers, plus we know from various press accounts of child abuse by same-sex
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couples that often children raised in such homes are actively coached to provide
answers to outsiders;
(3) the quantifiable negative outcomes on children often do not manifest until they
are adults, particularly in their late twenties and beyond, at which time most of the
social-science researchers are no longer willing to include them in their studies;
and
(4) the social-science researchers like to exclude the life histories of children raised
by same-sex couples who do not fit rigid particulars without complicating factors.
In my case, when I debated same-sex parenting, people have repeatedly suggested
that my case is not applicable in any general sense, due to the fact that my mother
and her partner chose to live in separate houses despite co-parenting me, and the
fact that my mother died when I was still a teenager. Because Mark Regnerus and
Doug Allen did include such complicated cases in their sample, they were pilloried
rather than credited for reversing a long-standing problem with social-science
methodology in this area (see Loren Marks’ study published in July 2012, Samesex parenting and children's outcomes: A closer examination of the American
Psychological Association’s brief on gay and lesbian parenting, 41 Soc. Sci. Res.
4, at 735-751).
In my travels working with children from alternative family structures, I find it
impossible to come across a pristine case of a child raised by two same-sex adults
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without any mitigating factor like a divorce, third-party reproduction, adoption, or
death of a parent; therefore I argue that the subject pools gathered by social-science
researchers are at best rarified and handpicked or at worst the product of basic
academic fraud.
Below I attach a partial bibliography of testimonials, stories, and news items
about children raised by same-sex couples, to show the repeated pattern of
complexities. (There are many more examples which there is not room to put here.)
These family structures are so complex and specific that it is virtually impossible
to reduce them to statistics, meaning that the social-science consensus is, at this
point, utterly worthless.
III. Annotated Bibliography
A. ADULTS
*1) Jean-Dominique Bunel (raised by lesbians):
. . . “I oppose this bill because in the name of a fight against
inequalities and discrimination, we would refuse a child one of its
most sacred rights, upon which a universal, millenia-old tradition
rests, that of being raised by a father and a mother. You see, two
rights collide: the right to a child for gays, and the right of a child to a
mother and father. The international convention on the rights of the
child stipulates in effect that “the highest interest of the child should
be a primary consideration” (article 3, section 1). Here this ‘higher
interest’ leaves no doubt.” But it is the wounded man who
concludes: “If two women who raised me had been married prior
to the adoption of such a bill, I would have jumped into the fray
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and would have brought a complaint before the French state and
before the European Court of the rights of man, for the violation
of my right to a mom and a dad.” Le Figaro (10/01/13)
R.O. López, Le Figaro runs confessional of man raised by lesbians, who opposes
gay marriage now, English Manif, Jan. 11, 2013, 8:58 a.m., http://englishmanif.
blogspot.com/2013/01/le-figaro-runs-confessional-of-man.html (last visited April
4, 2014, as with all other Internet links herein).
*2) Dawn Stefanowicz (raised by gay father):
. . . My mental and physical health was jeopardized as I was exposed
to my father’s and his partners’ lifestyle choices, leaving me
traumatized. . . . By 30 years old, I was deeply grieved as my father
had died of AIDS and many of his (ex) partners were either dead or
dying.
I too had my “days of silence” as my father threatened me. He used
me as bait to attract sexual partners. Though I was deeply
disappointed with my father and his partners’ sexual behaviors, I
couldn’t say anything negative about my dad or the homosexual
lifestyle. For a time, I coped by being performance oriented and
denying the influences around me, pretending I could rise above
everything.
Test. by Dawn Stefanowicz, Conn. Gen. Assemb. Judiciary Comm. Pub. Hr’g,
Mar. 26, 2007, available at http://www.dawnstefanowicz.org/docs/R000326DawnTMY.pdf.
*3) Katy Faust (raised by lesbians):
In addition to the distinct and complimentary ways that men and
women parent, children need both sexes in their immediate world as
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they develop their own gender identity. It’s strongly held within the
social sciences that beginning as early as age three, children can (and
should) identify with their same-sex parent. Boys begin to gravitate
toward dads who should actively seek to include their sons in their
world. This gives incredible confidence to their boys and
communicates, “You are like me.” Girls begin to imitate mom and
mothers should encourage strength and femininity within their
daughters. This identification tells our girls “I’m on my way to
womanhood and it’s beautiful.”
Askme, You’re only against gay marriage because of your religion. Part 3 Gender
Identity, asktheBigot, Aug. 20, 2012, http://askthebigot.com/2012/08/20/genderidentity/ ;
Some object that not every marriage produces children and
therefore children are not a significant component of marriage. This
is indicative of the myopic view that marriage is an adult-centered
institution. Flip this around- not every marriage produces children,
but every child had a father and a mother. Our definition of the
family unit should reflect this biological reality and developmental
necessity.
Askme, You’re only against gay marriage because of your religion. Part 4Biology Matters, asktheBigot, Aug. 20, 2012, http://askthebigot.com/2012/08/20/
biology-matters/.
*4) Rivka Edelman (raised by lesbians):
R[ivka]: You can’t shame anybody. I saw that too. My mother
would have all these gay guys come over. There was one guy, his
name was Joe, who was supposedly a travel agent. And every time he
came over there was another boy he brought. Not a little boy. Maybe
14, 15, 16. I don’t know exactly. They were always very thuggish.
You know, monosyllabic. Like street kids. You know, always with a
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Bronx accent. Petulant, surly, street kids. And he’d buy them a new
pair of sneakers, and everything was Quaaludes and Nebutol. And
those popper things.
....
R[ivka]: And it wasn’t until years later that the dime dropped in
my head about what was going on, ‘cause I was like eleven, maybe.
And I realized what was going on and I said to my mother – because
she let my brother go off with him, I said to her, “how could you have
done that? How could you have let him go off with him?” And my
mother said, completely, without batting an eye, she said, “your
brother was seven then. He only likes twelve and up.” Like this is
okay? And it was a fixed like, twelve and up, not six, not five, not
three not four. Twelve and up.
R.O. López, La Joie de Vivre 2:10 -- Kids of Gay Couples Speak Out, Part 2 of 4-RIVKA EDELMAN, BOBBY LOPEZ, DAWN STEFANOWICZ, Mar. 24, 2014, 7:49
p.m., http://englishmanif.blogspot.com/2014/03/la-joie-de-vivre-210-kids-ofgay.html.
*5) Robert Oscar Lopez (raised by lesbians):
Quite simply, growing up with gay parents was very difficult, and
not because of prejudice from neighbors. People in our community
didn’t really know what was going on in the house. To most outside
observers, I was a well-raised, high-achieving child, finishing high
school with straight A’s.
Inside, however, I was confused. . . .
Robert Oscar Lopez, Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View,
Public Discourse, The Witherspoon Inst., Aug. 6th, 2012, http://www.
thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/08/6065/.
*6) Bronagh Cassidy (raised by lesbian mothers):
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But Cassidy knows better: She is one of the first generation of
“gayby boom” babies, raised by two moms. Adult children of samesex parents are rare. I recently came across Cassidy’s story by
accident, after she e-mailed a friend of mine who is a family scholar.
Back in 1976, Cassidy’s mom had a religious ceremony with a
woman named Pat. To make Cassidy, they did artificial insemination
at home, mixing the sperm of two gay friends “to make sure nobody
would ever know who the father was,” says Cassidy. (That was in the
days before widespread DNA testing.) The two women stayed
together for 16 years, until Pat died. Three years later, Cassidy’s
mother married a man.
What was it like for Cassidy being raised by two women she called
“Mom” and “My Pat”?
“When growing up, I always had the feeling of being something
unnatural,” Cassidy says. “I came out of an unnatural relationship; it
was something like I shouldn’t be there. On a daily basis, it was
something I was conflicted with. I used to wish, honestly that Pat
wasn’t there.”
Why does she oppose same-sex marriage? “It’s not something that
a seal of approval should be stamped on: We shouldn’t say it is a great
and wonderful thing and then you have all these kids who later in life
will turn around and realize they’ve been cheated. The adults choose
to have that lifestyle and then have a kid. They are fulfilling their
emotional needs — they want to have a child — and they are not
taking into account how that’s going to feel to the child; there’s a
clear difference between having same-sex parents and a mom and a
dad.”
....
Some people will say if Cassidy’s mom and “my Pat” had been
legally married, everything would have been fine. Cassidy doesn’t
think so. . . .
Maggie Gallagher, Adult Children Speak Out About Same Sex Parents, 2004, New
Jersey Family Policy Council, http://www.njfpc.org/adult-children-speak-outabout-same-sex-parents.
*7) Jeremy Deck (raised by gay father):
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After my parents’ separation, my sister and I began spending every
other weekend with my father in the city. He shared a condo with a
man who had also left his wife and children. The man’s two daughters
seemed to have adjusted to the situation. It was as if everything was
"normal." But I felt anything but normal. It was as if I had fallen
asleep and woken up in a bizarre alternate reality. At the end of the
day, my father would not walk into the bedroom with my mom, like
he had done only weeks before. Instead, he headed off to bed with a
man I had met only days before.
Those weekends were a nightmare for my sister and me. Not only
were we forced to leave our mother and friends, but we were placed in
a culture we knew nothing about. It was not just a foreign culture; it
was one which was anathema to the community in which we were
raised. We had gone from the Garden of Eden to Sodom and
Gomorrah. How could my father, who once reigned over our Eden,
suddenly become a supporter of what we had seen as the enemy?
....
It is this side of the story that I feel compelled to tell. Children of
homosexuals have a unique vantage point on the complexities of the
issue. Homosexuals are often able to surround themselves with likeminded individuals in the thriving gay culture. Spouses, parents, or
siblings of homosexuals do not usually immerse themselves in a
homosexual environment once their loved ones “come out.” Children,
however, are in a sense forced to live a lifestyle they have not chosen.
...
Jeremy Deck, My Father’s Closet, Boundless Webzine (courtesy of Internet
Archive Wayback Machine), undated but apparently from c. 2000, http://web.
archive.org/web/20120109091049/http://www.boundless.org/2000/features/a00004
17.html.
*8) Denise Shick (raised by gay father):
My dad was a cross dresser when I was a child. This made me feel
very uncomfortable around him growing up. This confused me with
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his role of a father in my childhood. I just wanted him to be my
“dad”.
I learned after his passing that he was in a homosexual
relationship. This was another dilemma for me to deal with. Even
though he had passed on, it seemed like another chapter of his life was
revealed to me. I had questioned this to myself growing up. I never
told anyone about myself questioning “if he was gay”. Now the truth
was there on pen and paper.
There are many of us going though [sic] this situation. There are
many of us out there. Don’t think the Gender Identify Disorder does
not exist or hurt people.
Denise Shick, Denise’s Story, courtesy of Internet Archive Wayback Machine,
2011, http://web.archive.org/web/20120404123248/http://www.help4families.
com/crisis.htm.
*9) “Debbie Smith” (raised by gay father):
. . . In addition, my dad didn’t change his lifestyle. Actually, it
worsened. His drinking made him more irritable and undependable.
In addition, he finally gave in to his desires to seek sexual
relationships with males. …
....
. . . How is a young woman supposed to deal with homosexual
pornography that she finds in her father’s closet? Is this something
that one talks about in private conversations? I never talked about it
until I got into counseling years later. Or what does one do when dear
old Dad asks you to type up some things that he’s written, and it turns
out to be pornographic in nature? The desire to please and obey
parents is overridden by the disgust felt upon reading this trash. How
can your own father think like this? It is difficult not to feel polluted
by the experience and wonder if, somehow, you are not damaged
goods because of the corruption of your father’s mind.
What about the lack of positive feedback regarding females and
femininity? As I look back, even when my brother and I were young,
there was little interaction between my father and I. There were few
compliments about the way I dressed or acted in ways that were
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affirming. Expressions of emotion were rare, unless they were angry
rants about his job, his relationships or other challenges in his life.
“Debbie Smith”, A Daughter’s Reflections About A Gay Father (undated),
DawnStefanowicz.org, http://www.dawnstefanowicz.org/pdfs/DebbieSmith’s
AUTOBIOGRAPHY.pdf.
B. KIDS
*1) Manuel Half (raised by gay father):
People are wicked, you scream, those people who say you are not
equal. Those whose love they say your love cannot equal. Those who
say your boyfriend is worth less, and those for whom even less your
son is worth.
People do not understand a homosexual father. Because of this,
you make me call you by your name. It’s more practical, more
plausible. Maybe, by calling you Papa, some feeling would be kindled
inside me.
But it’s good night, and then that is enough, and off you went to
bed.
R.O. López, La Joie de Vivre 1:3 -- The Manifesto of Manuel Half, son of a gay
father and surrogate mother, Nov. 16, 2013, 9:56 p.m., http://englishmanif.
blogspot.com/2013/11/la-joie-de-vivre-13-manifesto-of-manuel.html.
*2) Anonymous Girl, “Donor Conceived” (raised by lesbians):
I have gay parents.
I spend most of my time at my best friends house. I hang out with
her Dad cuz I never had one and he is this awesome guy. My friends
Dad is a lot like Charlie from Twilight! I cried when I read about
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Bellas father in the books and in all his scenes in the movies. Mostly
at my friend’s house it feels like I can just be myself. Someone has to
say it cuz I dont hear it but gay parents are selfish in a way. They dont
think what it’s going to be like for me to live in their world.
Am I the only one who feels this way? Am I a bad daughter
because I wish I had a Dad? Is there anyone else who has 2 Moms or
2 Dads who wonders what it would be like if they were born into a
normal family? Is ther anyone else who wants to be able to use the
word normal without gettin a lecture on what is normal???
I dont know my real father and never will. Its weird but I miss him.
I miss this man I will never know. Is it wrong for me to long for a
father like my friends have? She has two brothers I play basketball
with all the time. It feels so amazing to be included in their family.
When I am there I think this is what its like to be in a family that has a
Mom and a Dad. Then I have have to go home to my own world. I just
dont fit in it anymore.
Donor Conceived, Child of lesbian parents, AnonymousUs.org, July 17, 2013,
http://anonymousus.org/stories/story.php?sid=1554#.UpmL7FCUQ4y.
C. CHILD ABUSE BY GAY PARENTS WHO WERE NOT INITIALLY
INVESTIGATED THOROUGHLY, SINCE AUTHORITIES FEARED
APPEARING “BIGOTED AGAINST GAYS”
*1) Gay Couple Left Free to Abuse Boys Because Social Workers Feared
Being Branded Homophobic:
A homosexual foster couple were left free to sexually abuse
vulnerable boys in their care because social workers feared being
accused of discrimination if they investigated complaints, an inquiry
concluded yesterday.
Craig Faunch and Ian Wathey were one of the first homosexual
couples in the country to be officially approved as foster parents.
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....
Even when the mother of two of the children reported her
suspicions to the council, officials accepted the men's explanations
and did nothing.
....
In a scathing report published yesterday, Wakefield Metropolitan
District Council was condemned for treating the men as “trophy
carers”.
The children’s charity Kidscape said those in charge of overseeing
the safety of children in the care of Faunch and Wathey had allowed
political correctness to override common sense.
The report, following an independent review of the case, said:
“One manager described the couple as ‘trophy carers’ which led to
‘slack arrangements’ over placement.
“Another said that by virtue of their sexuality they had a ‘badge’
which made things less questionable.
“The sexual orientation of the men was a significant cause of
people not ‘thinking the unthinkable’.
“It was clear that a number of staff were afraid of being thought
homophobic.
“The fear of being discriminatory led them to fail to discriminate
between the appropriate and the abusive.”
....
Wathey, 42, was jailed for five years in June last year after being
convicted of four counts of sexual activity with a child and one
offence of causing a child to watch sexual activity.
Faunch, 33, received a six-year jail sentence after he was found
guilty of five charges of engaging in sexual activity with a child and
two of taking indecent photographs of a child.
....
Their victims included a 14-year-old boy with Asperger’s
syndrome, a form of autism, who had a mental age of seven and was
forced by Wathey to watch gay pornography.
Another youngster with a “very troubled background” was only in
their care for a few weeks before being abused by Faunch.
But social workers had been aware of “inappropriate” behaviour
long before then.
....
Judge Sally Cahill, QC, said neither had shown “empathy, remorse
or any responsibility for their actions”.
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Yesterday’s report said that the fostering panel which approved
Faunch and Wathey accepted without hesitation their request to look
after only boys on the basis that they didn’t feel equipped to look after
girls.
....
Last night, Michelle Elliott, a director of Kidscape, said: “Common
sense went out of the window when they allowed political correctness
to take over in this case.
“I don't care if you are homosexual or bisexual - if you are taking
care of children you need to be vetted and subjected to the same
investigation as anyone else.
“Child abuse knows no gender boundaries.”
Paul Sims, Gay couple left free to abuse boys - because social workers feared
being branded homophobic, Daily Mail (United Kingdom), Sept. 5, 2007, updated
9:53 p.m., http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-480151/Gay-couple-left-freeabuse-boys--social-workers-feared-branded-homophobic.html#ixzz2RccQApyQ.
*2) My Adoptive Dad Abused Me for Years but Social Workers Ignored My
Complaints Because He’s Gay:
A boy sexually abused by his adoptive father and his gay partner
was labelled an ‘unruly child’ by social workers who ignored his
complaints for years, a damning report has revealed.
....
Mr [Andy] Cannon said: ‘I believe if my adoptive dad was in a
heterosexual relationship then my complaints would have been
listened to earlier.
‘It seems the council didn’t want to be seen as victimising gay
people – they would rather look politically correct and let them get
away with it to avoid any repercussions.[’]
Steve Robson, Andy Cannon, 23, was sexually abused by his gay adoptive parents,
Daily Mail (United Kingdom), Mar. 28, 2013, updated 6:39 p.m., http://www.
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dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300779/My-adoptive-dad-abused-years-socialworkers-ignored-complaints-hes-gay.html#ixzz2Rcaydhzw.
IV. The Rhetorical Climate for Critics of Same-Sex Parenting
In addition to the testimonials or news items affixed in the list supra, there are
dozens of other people raised by same-sex couples who have communicated with
me, but they do not want to reveal their names or even have their stories recorded.
The reason for people’s fear of being named can be illustrated by what
happened to me since I published “Growing up with two moms” in Public
Discourse in 2012. Scott Rosenzweig, a blogger who was then with the New Civil
Rights Movement, sent over ten emails accusing me of “hate speech,” “bullying,”
and “bigotry,” to my university, usually copying dozens of other people including
high California officials. Rosenzweig placed an open records request to my
university and was able to gain access to many of my work emails that I had never
intended to make public.
In August 2012, Karen Ocamb, a blogger at Frontiers LA, posted a photograph
of me with a headline saying, “perhaps you know this man,” then naming my
workplace—it felt to me like an invitation for people to harass or even attack me
physically. Jeremy Hooper, Zack Ford, and Wayne Besen are all powerful gay
bloggers with a high national profile, who have followed my blogs and social
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media and written articles accusing me of being “anti-gay.” Now people who
Google me pull up links to countless postings that define me as anti-gay. The
Human Rights Campaign lists me on the “Regnerus Fallout” page, detailing the
ostensible misdeeds of people who collaborated with Mark Regnerus to demean
same-sex parents. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation placed me
on their Commentator Accountability Project list. Then Rosenzweig sent an
alarmist email to my university president and a host of other school officials,
saying that I was insane and students should not be willing to study with me.
When I was invited to speak at the College of Holy Cross, I was later told by
the students who wanted to bring me there that administrators would not approve
my visit. Students at Stanford invited me to speak at a conference and were quickly
barraged with angry postings, linking to GLAAD denunciations of me, saying that
I was anti-gay and intimating that inviting me to campus was akin to bigotry.
At the department level, I had to be reviewed for tenure by a committee
member who is openly gay and who received all the accusatory emails from Scott
Rosenzweig. During the tenure review I was repeatedly pressured to explain my
politics and told that my “personal revelations” posed a problem for my teaching.
This went into the record even though the department did vote to give me tenure.
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The references to “personal revelations” appeared again in letters at higher
levels of review so these have become part of my personnel file.
Children raised by same-sex couples face a gauntlet if they break the silence
about the “no disadvantages” consensus, which few people can truly grasp. They
feel guilty about saying such things about the people who raised them and also fear
for their personal safety and ability to make a living.
In such a climate, I must conclude that placing children in same-sex couples’
homes is dangerous, because they have no space or latitude to express negative
feelings about losing a mom or dad, and in fact they have much to fear if they do.
It is clear to me that almost nobody will be willing to report abuses in such homes
or even listen to the children who are receiving the abuse.
I must also conclude that the same-sex parenting consensus is not a consensus
at all. We cannot in good faith accept the findings of sociologists who undertook
work in a climate marked by repression and persecution of children raised by
same-sex couples who have information running contrary to the desired conclusion
that same-sex parenting is safe and uniformly positive.
The same-sex parenting positions put forward by politically compromised
groups such as the American Psychiatric Association and the American
Sociological Association are misleading and should be thrown out. We have ample
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reasons based on humanitarian grounds to respect the relationship of a child to his
mother and father, especially in the context of a debate in which gay activists are
asking for people to respect their sexual relationship to each other. It is not
necessary to do additional research to find that something precious and important
has been taken from a child who is forced to live without a mother or father, and
the state has no business encouraging such a taking.
For these reasons, please abide by the Virginia marriage laws.
CONCLUSION
This amicus respectfully asks the Court to reverse the judgment of the court
below.
April 4, 2014
Respectfully submitted,
s/David Boyle
P.O. Box 15143
Long Beach, CA 90815
(734) 904-6132
[email protected]
Counsel for Amicus Curiae Robert Oscar Lopez
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CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE AND WORD COUNT
The undersigned certifies that the accompanying Brief of Amicus Curiae Robert
Oscar Lopez Supporting Defendant-Appellant Schaefer, and for Reversal, in No.
14-1167, and by extension in Nos. 14-1169 and 14-1173, is in 14-point,
proportionately-spaced Times New Roman font; and that its length, exclusive of
“exempt” sections including the table of contents and table of authorities/citations,
etc., is 6942 words, since his Microsoft Word 2010 word-processing program
states the word count is 6942 words.
Thank you for your time,
April 4, 2014
Respectfully submitted,
s/David Boyle
P.O. Box 15143
Long Beach, CA 90815
(734) 904-6132
[email protected]
Counsel for Amicus Curiae Robert Oscar Lopez
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CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
The undersigned certifies that he electronically filed the foregoing with the
Clerk of the Court for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by
using the appellate CM/ECF system on April 4, 2014.
He also certifies that all parties or their counsel of record were served through
the CM/ECF system if they are registered CM/ECF users.
April 4, 2014
Respectfully submitted,
s/David Boyle
P.O. Box 15143
Long Beach, CA 90815
(734) 904-6132
[email protected]
Counsel for Amicus Curiae Robert Oscar Lopez
29